24 April 2007 - Will the Italians be the “maestri” at home?

Will the Italians be the “maestri” at home? Lausanne – 24 April 2007 Olympic Champion Marco Galiazzo (ITA)    Stage 2 of the Meteksan Archery World Cup 2007 will be held next week in Varese (ITA). More than 270 archers from 40 countries have registered to the event with this one goal in common: after the first stage in Ulsan (KOR) a few weeks ago, the athletes will be eager to garner new precious points to qualify for the World Cup Final in November!   For the first time the Archery World Cup will make a stop in Italy with this year’s Stage 2 hosted in Varese from 30 April to 5 May. The participation keeps increasing for each event proving that the World Cup has become one of the major tournaments of the Outdoor Archery calendar.   Recurve Men Third seed Balzhinima Tsyrempilov (RUS) will be looking to take the lead of the World Cup ranking. The main contenders to Tsyrempilov might well be the Italians: Di Buo, Frangilli, Olympic Champion Galiazzo and team-mates Lunelli, Tonelli and Nespoli.   We will also keep an eye on recent Junior World Champion Romain Girouille (FRA) and his young team-mate Thomas Aubert who finished 13th in Ulsan. The Chinese archers will certainly be among the favourites.   Recurve Women Korea will be present in this category with four archers (Hye Yeon Lee, Hyun Ji Kang, Seung Hwa Jung, Yu Mi Kim) who were not shooting in the first stage in Ulsan. They will be strong contenders as usual for places on the podium. They will try to stop reigning World Cup winner Zhang Juan Juan (CHN) to collect too many additional points for the general ranking. Zhang is ranked 7th after this year’s first stage.   The local archers Perosini, Tonetta, Benatti, Frigeri, Valeeva and Lionetti will try to mark their first points this year after they came back empty-handed from Korea.   Compound Men Most of the archers currently ranked in the top eight will participate in the Varese World Cup stage. The first four - Jimenez (ESA), Zamaninejad (IRI), Van Zutphen (NED) and Wilde Logan (USA) - will fight a battle for new World Cup points and to stay ahead.   Australian Clint Freeman lies well in ambush at fifth rank with Italian Sergio Pagni (8), Danish Martin Damsbo (9), Swiss Patrizio Hofer and American Reo Wilde (11).   Compound Women The 2006 World Cup runner-up Anna Kazantseva and winner Sofia Goncharova will once again be the favourites to the first place in Varese. However, the two extraordinary Russians, who finished first and second respectively at the first stage in Ulsan, will face great opposition from USA (Jamie Van Natta, Jahna Davis and Joayn Fleury), from France (Amandine Bouillot and Valerie Fabre) and from Iran (Shabani Akram and Sakineh Ghasempour).   Among the outsiders are European Champion Camilla Soemod (DEN), recent Indoor World Champion Eugenia Salvi (ITA), as well as Amaya Paz (PHI), Nicky Hunt and Nichola Simpson (GBR).   This year the Meteksan Archery World Cup features a complete FITA round during the qualifications (4x 36 arrows at four distances). The archers then go into the exciting single elimination match play (12 arrows only).   The program in Varese is: 30 April: Official Practice and Opening Ceremony 1 May: Qualifications in Recurve Men and Compound Women 2 May: Qualifications in Recurve Women and Compound Men 3 May: Individual Eliminations matches up to semi-finals 4 May: Team Eliminations matches up to semi-finals 5 May: Individual and Team medal matches   We are looking forward to an exciting World Cup Stage 2!   Ludivine Maitre Wicki FITA Communication